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elections 2015

This week we have heard how Sally Keeble turned down a nice little one thousand pound gift from ex-pm Tony Blair, though not the only one to turn down the money, we would be fooling ourselves if we thought this had anything to do with a principled stance of the ex-pm.

Her Blairite credentials go even deeper than this, when she started throwing punches at the new PM Gordon Brown, sticking the knife into him only 18 months after he became PM. As we now know there was a legendary feud between Blair and Brown, so it doesn’t take genius to work out which side of the fence she sat on.

Sally voted for the war in Iraq, so it makes no sense for her turning the money down over that, so what other reasons does she have for saying no? Maybe, a political stunt in order to try and distance herself from a government she was in bed with.

It would be unfair of me to not say why Sally Keeble herself told us she turned down the money, it was because:“I actually believe that British Politics, and particularly at election time, should be funded very clearly by British money.”

Her refusal then serves two purposes, it is a rather obvious attempt to distance herself from brand Blair, and a more subtle attempt to appear nationalistic to try and poach some UKIP voters.

So there you have it according to Sally, British elections need to be fought with “British money”, we can assume she only wants British people being members of the Labour party in Northampton, not to mention the Trade Unions, hopefully she will vote against and fight against any donations from multinational corporations to the Labour party (like hell she will).

This is far from being some kind of grand gesture or some kind of principled stance, Tony Blair could keep his money because Sally already has his principles. Hopefully the people of Northampton won’t be fooled by this shameful and spineless ploy, Sally was at the time and still is a shameless Blairite.

As we know it Is election year and Left Unity will have about as much impact on the election as the bedroom tax on the deficit. Regardless of how much of an impact we are going to have however we need to be having a simple and clear message with which the people can relate to us with, UKIP have for example anti-EU and anti-immigration.

We need to have these simple messages with which to engage and strengthen our arguments:

Anti-bankers, anti-corruption

Anti-cuts, pro-hope

Forget the election, it is going to be a big waste of time on our part but we can and should begin campaigning around these issues. Not a week goes by where there is not another scandal within the banking sector and we should really be capitalising on that hate and inequality to begin hammering home our anti-capitalist message.

Left Unity Northampton tried to arrange for Left Unity to have a national day of action calling for bankers to face criminal charges. Our motion never got heard at the NC, and we have heard nothing back from it but this is the kind of thing LU needs to be campaigning on to begin whipping up support among the general population.

Anti-cuts and pro-hope should be linked together, our anti-cuts message should be more positive in its message in that we have to describe and explain in clear and concise terms what a possible society post-austerity can look like and what kind of country we can live in. There is another way, we just have to make it possible.

This way LU can begin building up an identity of one that fights inequality and injustice, while at the same time promoting a new society, a new way of doing things – it can be the vehicle and voice of change. At the moment there is no clear identity, which creates confusion – we need a long term marketing strategy.

One message is clearly positive, the other is a negative campaign we can however unite around both messages, the anti-banker thing is simple and easy for people to relate to while at the same time the positive message can give people hope. We are going to have to fight tooth and nail if we are going to achieve anything.

Left Unity nationally should begin this and it should be rolling out support to all branches in campaigning on these issues, while promoting the message on a wider scale. National call outs, national days of actions, posters, campaign materials and of course creative and inventive actions. We need to regain the initiative, make it fun, make it colourful and make it loud.

Left Unity is new, we are not an established brand, nobody knows what we are and who we stand for and this is what we need to change if we are to achieve our objectives, unify the left and create a social movement with which to change the country and hopefully the world.

Left Unity has a diverse array of people all with varying skill sets and we need to be educating and sharing those skills with branches and activists so we are a campaigning force, and a force for change within our communities. We need to support local branches where needed, promote the creative element of our members and get out on the streets

There are people with a shit load of experience and they need to be utilised so that we can all be effective, I carried a call out for volunteers we had nearly a hundred people wanting to volunteer for us, this was last year but nothing happened (was originally to help with web site/social media but LU employed somebody instead). If we had utilised those volunteers effectively, we would be in great place to campaign come the election and be promoting a better internal culture of cooperation and collectivism.

So what are we waiting for? It is ours for the taking, we need to get busy and get active – show the country and the people what is possible, what we are made of and what we want to achieve. Enough of being on the defensive reacting to this and that, it is time we go on the offensive take the fight to them and build up some momentum.